3) You just proved my point, thank you. ANY class can do the same HPS. If you REALLY think holy cannot compete on heroic fights like empress/garalon you are completely mistaken and are probably a bad holy priest stacking haste and spamming too many AOE spells trying to snipe heals.

Mastery + smart casting = HPS + HIGH HPM

On an average boss fight as holy, I can regen 200k-300k mana because I can time my cooldowns properly and regen a FULL mana pool as well as having higher HPS/HPM because of mastery.

IE; Having serendipity up and being able to time the PoH HIT a split second after the aoe happens, not waiting for the aoe then casting it.

Having a fresh prayer of mending on someone, maybe even having a couple renews up and making sure CoH is off cooldown.

Learn to play a holy priest kid, then get back to me.

And becuse I know it's coming. Check my logs, please.. yea I play disc right now on progression fights because it simply makes things easier. That does not however mean I couldn't play holy and do the same thing. BEcause I guarantee I can.

Don't take it the wrong way and I'm not really saying what you said wasn't theoretically true, but you aren't really doing any of those things, especially the things I left.

Watch your Tsulong progression on your stream. You will see how much overhealing you're doing (in a 2 healable fight, you're the one doing the heal sniping there), how much you're delaying Mindbender, practically don't do anything on the move and basically heal mediocre. I'm not saying it to demean you in any way, but even if you know what you should/can do, you're not doing it and maybe you're not aware that you're not doing it.

Originally Posted by Heap

Was DA stacking ever even a thing?

Also, yay for less mobility if you chose to take anything other than solace! (do we know yet if it heals or adds evangelism stacks?)

DA stacking was a thing. On a lot of fights on 10man, Atonement ends up being the better choice unless you're playing for the meters. But on 25s, the gain from dpsing in your non-SS time isn't that much of a gain, so being a PoH bot is a valid thing (and does more hps in most cases).

Are you sure that you want to go there? You're currently at 3/16 and I've seen your gameplay, you are utterly awful.

Place him on ignore, like I did. He's not worth it, Cookie.

To everyone else, Divine Hymn was introduced in 3.1. Was utterly terrible. In 3.2 they changed it to be reminiscent of what it is now; deemed too powerful then and nerfed twice. During Cata, the spell was not updated until 4.2 or 4.3 (I believe it was Firelands or Dragon Soul, my memory fails me). It's been a mandatory Holy spell since then. I believe DH has spent just under half it's life being terrible, and half it's existence being awesome.

To everyone else, Divine Hymn was introduced in 3.1. Was utterly terrible. In 3.2 they changed it to be reminiscent of what it is now; deemed too powerful then and nerfed twice. During Cata, the spell was not updated until 4.2 or 4.3 (I believe it was Firelands or Dragon Soul, my memory fails me). It's been a mandatory Holy spell since then. I believe DH has spent just under half it's life being terrible, and half it's existence being awesome.

FFS you make it sound like every other raid CD pre Cata had a 3-6 minute cooldown like they do now. Holy paladins were tank healers till Cata.

Resto Druids had a shitty 10+ minute cooldown on tranquil.

Resto shaman didn't even have a raid cooldown.

Monks did not exist.

Please tell me how divine hymn was bad pre mop... Pre Cata even before everything was balanced to be the same thing.

You have NO idea what you are talking about. And I bet your raiding experience will go to show that unless you want to link your armoy

Divine hymn got buffed in DS patch to heal for ~2x the amount, heal more targets, and have a much shorter cd for holy via a talent. For the prior 2 tiers of that expansion it was pretty lackluster, and only worth casting for the +10% healing taken buff.

4.3 patch notes:

- Divine Hymn now affects 5 targets, up from 3.
- Holy: State of Mind has been redesigned and is now called Heavenly Voice. Heavenly Voice increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.

Divine hymn got buffed in DS patch to heal for ~2x the amount, heal more targets, and have a much shorter cd for holy via a talent. For the prior 2 tiers of that expansion it was pretty lackluster, and only worth casting for the +10% healing taken buff.

4.3 patch notes:

- Divine Hymn now affects 5 targets, up from 3.
- Holy: State of Mind has been redesigned and is now called Heavenly Voice. Heavenly Voice increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.

It's a shame you can't show any credibility to back yourself up. You are troll who has contributed 0 information to this post and thinks your opinion means even a sliver of something in this discussion.

Back on topic now that the trolls have had their feed.

People will complain about every little mechanic they can on any spec, affliction warlocks will say "amg dogs r 4 2 ez plz change how we r werk"

Paladins will say they hate the holy charge mechanics blah blah

Holy priests will say they hate how bad their regen is.

That doesn't make those things true, it means the people don't know how to fully utilize their class abilities to the fullest without easy mode mechanics.

Disc changes are completely valid and needed. Personally, I am sick of feeling like I am required to play a 2 spell spec to make up for my raids mistakes and gimp boss mechanics to mere nothingness.

This thread has fallen to the point where the discussion no longer makes sense and people just look like assholes. Regardless of your opinions you can state them in a way that makes you look intelligent and respectful instead of looking like a tool. Fighting and name calling in a thread like this will do nothing but get it shut down and it certainly doesn't make for good discussion, you just end up looking like children. Might wanna take it to PM's so people can have an actual discussion instead of trying to measure how huge your internet dick is.

If you actually give a shit about either spec try and be respectful, even if it's just slightly. I don't contribute much to threads like these because I'm not sure that's what I'm good at, but I usually take a lot away from them. Not this one.

Am I the only disc priest who is a little concerned about the removal of the group binding effect on Prayer of Healing? Marking it a smart heal would further remove our ability to use Spirit Shell before a damage spike comes out because we cannot control who gets the heal. It would be good for holy and for non-Spirit Shell moments but I guess it would encourage people to use more Greater Heals/Flash Heals during spirit shell xD

They simply need to design PoH so that it smart-heals the target and 4 low-health targets within 30 yards, but preferring players in the targets group. Prioritizing low-health FIRST but then falling back to a group target. The benefit being that the 30 yard restriction will now more likely hit 5 players, improving aoe efficiency, but if everyone is at 100% or at the same % it reliably hits the 5 people in the target's group.

Edit: actually, change the priority to heal the target's group first, or another low-health player(s) within 30 yards second. That way if your group 1 is healers and tanks, and you want to prioritize them with a PoH it will, but if one of the 5 is at 100% it will instead heal someone in another group with low-health.

Anyone that's been reading the priest forums for a decent amount of time knows HolyLathusDisc is clueless, just ignore him.

As for 5.2, I feel we'll be fine. It'll be a mix of Spirit Shell, atonement, PW:S and PoH healing, instead of pure PoH.

I'm a bit worried about DA on PoH though, it started the expansion at 30% and was buffed to 50% because it wasn't good enough, now suddenly it's gone altogether. I'd rather see it moved to say 25% on PoH and 50% on crit heals. The guaranteed PoH is what makes the Disc PoH competitive with holy's, as holy gets +25% from chakra and then the HoT from their mastery. If we aren't proccing DAs then our PoH is just flat out worse.

The guaranteed PoH is what makes the Disc PoH competitive with holy's, as holy gets +25% from chakra and then the HoT from their mastery. If we aren't proccing DAs then our PoH is just flat out worse.

We will have to value crit more. They should bring back our +crit ability, we used to have renewed hope but it is gone in mop. I'd prefer an enhancement to Borrowed Time that also grants +crit for the 6 seconds.

I know that disc priest will remain good in 10mans, but I raid in a 25man environment, along with another disc priest. I'm full haste/crit and he is full spirit/master, I use atonement for most of the fight and spam PoH for spikes, and he does it opposite to me. I'm getting buffed in 5.2 (the reduced mana cost to PW:S will help immensely plus I would much rather cast an instant spell and get back to DPSing than spam PoH) but he is getting nerfed hard. I just hope that we can both continue doing what we like without having losing much hps (we could Spirit Shell/Divine Aegis the entire raid before the damage spike but we can't bubble 25 people lol)
(It's hilarious reading all the bashing that's going on lol)

I know that disc priest will remain good in 10mans, but I raid in a 25man environment, along with another disc priest. I'm full haste/crit and he is full spirit/master, I use atonement for most of the fight and spam PoH for spikes, and he does it opposite to me. I'm getting buffed in 5.2 (the reduced mana cost to PW:S will help immensely plus I would much rather cast an instant spell and get back to DPSing than spam PoH) but he is getting nerfed hard. I just hope that we can both continue doing what we like without having losing much hps (we could Spirit Shell/Divine Aegis the entire raid before the damage spike but we can't bubble 25 people lol)
(It's hilarious reading all the bashing that's going on lol)

I'd like to see your armory/logs since i like to smite a lot but i m geared like your friend

And another question for everyone: has anyone done the math to see how this chance will affect the priority on secondary stats?

A lot of people are missing the point. You aren't supposed to get anything in return if you're getting nerfed. Again I'll point to history to show that any class that was overpowered and could blanket an entire raid in heals (or absorbs) got nerfed. There's no "consolidation", you're getting nerfed and in a good way. The new changes force Discipline to use a larger variety of their toolset rather than simply spamming PoH for DA blanketing and in between the SS cd staking 5x Evangelism for Archangel. Look at Mistweavers as a direct comparison: their healing took a straight 25% nerf and their mana gains took a 15% nerf. They got roughy nothing in return because the idea was to nerf them back down to mortal status.

I'm going to bit blunt here so forgive me if I ruffle a few feathers: so far the only person who's even seen Disc tested with the 5.2 changes in a raid was me. We have logs. I can easily copy them here. The main point though is that Disc is fine. It'll remain strong. GC's latest post on the issue is 100% accurate: Disc shouldn't do equal throughput (healing wise) compared to the throughput classes because the absorbs Disc has are stronger than raw HPS. Effectively increasing someone's hp pool by 100-125k is an amazing benefit to a raid, anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't do HMs. Empress' pre-nerf Sonic Discharge did enough damage to kill a non-Shadow priest outright if Fade (with Glyph) was on CD. The way to circumvent it was by pre-shielding them. Heals can't work on classes who get 1-shot. Shields do. That's why Disc should have low, if not the worst, throughput.

Also a point: Divine Hymn (used in a similar fashion to Healing Tide/Tranquility) heals for about 20% more than revival and often heals as much as a Healing Tide or Tranquility does.

As for 5.2, I feel we'll be fine. It'll be a mix of Spirit Shell, atonement, PW:S and PoH healing, instead of pure PoH.

I'm a bit worried about DA on PoH though, it started the expansion at 30% and was buffed to 50% because it wasn't good enough, now suddenly it's gone altogether. I'd rather see it moved to say 25% on PoH and 50% on crit heals. The guaranteed PoH is what makes the Disc PoH competitive with holy's, as holy gets +25% from chakra and then the HoT from their mastery. If we aren't proccing DAs then our PoH is just flat out worse.

I think removing DA from poh is a step in the right direction, but it stops halfway. Quite agreeing with this:

No question, Spirit shell is a problem. So was DA on PoH. Removing DA may be good for the class. Without increasing PoH healing, it may be fatal for the class. Kinda like morphine.

I always thought guaranteed DA was a bandaid, since it was introduced in a patch that basically tried to save disc from the pit it had fallen in the start of mop: it wasn't meant to be a long term solution. The PWS buff made then was the right thing to make the spell correspond to the mana cost it had received, so that was basically finishing something not thought through since beta. The DA on poh though has been a desperate forced fix. It had no logical reason other than buff disc aoe healing. Aegis had no logical reason to proc in a way on some spells and differently in others: just like now mastery has no reason to affect some absorbs and not others: these are all the dev's inability to properly balance things so they just go on the "I'll hold on to a rule when I like it and ignore it when I dont". That is no consistent way to do things - you either have a rule or you dont.

My opinion from the beta was that disc specc is mechanically flawed. There wasn't a lot to be expected to be changed in a patch like the February cata one, but it was understandable that the specc was unfinished after moving a huge distance from its wrath incarnation to the cata one. What I dont understand is how they failed to do it right in the mop beta. They had a perfectly working specc, tested all cata. They should have remembered DA on poh had been a bandaid, an unfinished business. Instead they dicked around with rigid and illogical approaches to make holy and disc work completely different by using different spells, and trying to divide the priest arsenal in 2 complete toolboxes (we have lots of spells, but not THAT many). There was a lot of focus on making the speccs completely different, instead of making two speccs that work. Considering how the homogenized classes in general, the idea of making 2 speccs that use completely different spells was flawed by definition, since those spells would have had to end up doing similar things anyway. They tried to treat disc and holy as 2 different classes, when they aren't and they dont need to be.

What I think they should have solved in mop beta was removing da from poh and give disc another aoe spell. The introduction of spirit shell alone solved the group preshielding, there was no reason we should have kept DA too. I hoped the level 90 talents will alleviate the issues, they somewhat do, but 2/3 are generally clunky with positioning, which ended up in most of us using cascade, aside some exceptions for stacked fights (pretty rare ones afaik). Cascade is a decent spell, but its dumb as fuck, with a completely weird reason for choosing a target: distance. We heal targets that lack most health, not the ones that are furthest away. Maybe it was intended to work in conjunction with other classes aoe spells that are smart but have lower range. Still, the long cd makes it useless for burst dmg that requires you to fill up a raid in 10 seconds. It helps with disc movement issues, but it chooses targets for the wrong reason (which leads to humongous overhealing numbers for it), its half unused in 10 mans vs 25 mans (I know it still heals for a bucket but it costs the same mana even if it wont hit more than 5/10 targets vs the intended 16).

Another problem that I think was re-created in mop beta, despite the lesson of cata beta, was stats synergy. When cata came, disc was clunky because spells and stats had a very poor synergy: mastery affected only crits and PWS (which was weak as hell), haste only affected healing spells and gcd of PWS, crit only affected healing spells and DA. Guaranteed aegis lifted the value of mastery, made haste also contribute, and crit bonus DA brought it all together. Renewed hope was a good way to control some crit on single target spells that did not have guaranteed aegis. Crit also brought inspiration, which no disc priest worth his salt avoided. They removed renwed hope, and they removed inspiration, and they put nothing in their place.

I know ppl keep saying "you should stack crit". It's wrong. Shields need to be timed to be efficient, they need to be controlled. You cant time a crit. They might look good on meters, but its tossing a rock in the dark and hoping it will knock over somebody. Random shielding is a bad mechanic, not meters wise, but from a point of view of intelligent healing/triage.
Things that I think could help:
- make PoH work the same as GH with inner focus for decreasing cd. It would give disc more controlled crits and would counterbalance the brutal difference from what was basically us having 100% crit for poh.
- reintroduce renewed hope for the same reason (the cata version, not the old one I listed above). You cant have a specc directed to work around crit and let it count on base gear crit like any other healer.
- let spirit shell work with mastery. Adjust the amount if needed, but its illogical for 2 absorbs to benefit from this stat and one not. It shows inconsistency and a fail to solve an issue. You dont make laws to work for 60% of the population, you make them to work for everybody.
- introduce for PWS a similar talent as the holy rapid renewal (and I think druids have something similar too) regarding GCD. If they want us to use it more than tank healing (which seems to be the intention, since we could shield tank fine until now with rapture on a close cd with WS), they need to give us the tools to not make this a drag. Before ppl jump in and say OP: 5 shields, even with IW and PWS will still cost enough to not let you spam them. I dont see multishielding viable for more than 5 targets usually, more only in extreme cases. 5 shields will still cost around 75k mana, even with one of them proccing rapture, its still gonna be around 60 k mana spent.
- get inspiration back. We still live under the impression that disc has a lot of utility. My opinion, as a disc priest that plays for a while, is that we lost more utility than we have left. Our raid buff can be brought by a scroll (stamina), not saying that it can be brought by other classes, because all of them are same and I think this is a good thing for 10 mans. You cant bring kings on a scroll tho.

What we gained:
1. Power Word Barrier/ Spirit Shell
2. The ability to heal via dps. Disc has always been an aggressive healer, and it could actually dps in tbc too, it just didn't have the mana to sustain healing and dpsing. this is more a case of refining an existing feature.
3. Body and Soul (or feathers).

I'm not bothered about numbers, numbers can always be adjusted. I'm bothered about mechanics and how spells feel with each other. Sorry, this ended up a wall of text that nobody will have the patience to read :S.

No you're missing the point. The point of a nerf (or buff) is to achieve balance.

I don't care if they remove DA altogether, as long as they compensate it with more raw healing. I honestly fear that with our low throughput come 5.2 (basically halved AoE healing), I won't be able to 2 heal fights anymore.

Only a small portion of my actual casted spells are PoH, the rest are mostly atonement, PWS, PoM and some greater heals.
Other than for SS, I use PoH when i need the raw healing throughput, throughput that we will no longer have.